Hoi An: Trip to Mỹ Sơn

We booked a tour from Hoi An to visit My Son (pronounced me sun), $5 for the tour and $5 for entry. The ruins are about an hour and a half drive away, but we are getting used to spending hours on a bus getting to and from these kind of places.

My Son is an incredible place, over 1,500 years old in parts and built using bricks with no mortar (a technique they can’t reproduce to this day). It is of the same design as Angkor Wat, but it is lot older. It was the main religious centre for the Champa people who came to South Vietnam around 400AD from the island of Java (Indonesia). The Champa people had their capital city in the centre of Vietnam and My Son was where they would go to pray. It laid forgotten in the jungle for a few hundred years until the French discovered the remains in the late 19th century.

Luckily for us the temperature had dropped a little and it was in the low 20s making the tour comfortable. We had about 2 hours walking around the site in total, lead by our guide, who knew his history but also had a good sense of humour.

We had a good half day on the tour and the only thing that went wrong was the camera failed on us. The lens (16-50mm) wouldn’t focus, leaving us to use the 55-200mm lens. Not the best situation but something is better than nothing.

After getting back to Hoi An around 1:30pm we headed for the Indian restaurant (called Ganesh) just round the corner from our hotel. We had been hunting for it a few nights back and spent 30 mins wandering in a circle before giving up, we then walked past it on the way home and realised that we had not only walked past it earlier that night but we were only one street away the while time we were searching. So the next night we went straight there and found it full. Because of the grief caused from searching for this restaurant we decided to give it 30 mins then try again. An hour later it was still packed and no tables available. So in the afternoon we had almost 3 hours between coming back from My Son and getting the bus to the airport and we were determined to eat there. The place was deserted and remained so for the duration. The curry was excellent and we both thoroughly enjoyed it.